FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT SCIENCE TEACHERS - PAGE 2

This fall, Elgin High School graduate Janet Kowalski will head to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., in pursuit of a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical sciences. A member of the top 2 percent of her class, Kowalski joins peers who are similarly ambitious, saying they plan to be surgeons, nurses, biologists and engineers. For the second year in a row, the top 2 percent of Elgin High School's graduating seniors also all happen to be women. And at Larkin High School in Elgin, which is also in District 46, eight of the 11 top graduates are women.

Fourth-grade science teachers at Three Oaks School will receive $670 from the Cary Elementary School District 26 school board to buy educational video tapes to supplement their pupils' studies. The school board recently agreed to award the teachers a district-funded Innovative Grant to add the videos to the educational materials available for an upcoming study of whales. In their grant application, the teachers said they did not have enough resources for the 120 pupils who will be studying whales, said Fran Roll, school board president.

Intelligent design isn't part of the science curriculum at Hersey High School, which follows state standards in teaching the theory of evolution first proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859. But that doesn't mean educators at the school in Arlington Heights don't want students to be aware of the controversial idea that some aspects of the natural world should be attributed to an unnamed and unseen intelligent designer. About 500 members of Hersey's freshman class listened to a peppery debate last week on whether science teachers should be required to teach intelligent design.

Teachers have always been known to be resourceful, and science teachers at Naperville Central High School are no exception. For many years, they have made use of the school's proximity to the Riverwalk quarry and DuPage River for daylong field trips to study water quality. Juniors and seniors from the Weather and Environment class recently spent a day collecting data they will weave into a research project. Students get to use the Naperville Park District paddle boats to move about the quarry's surface.

Four high schools from the western suburbs have joined forces with Chemical Waste Management Inc. of Oak Brook to bring a new practical physics course to the average student this fall. Using a teaching method that is rapidly gaining popularity around the country and causing consternation among some traditional science teachers, a physics teacher and a vocational education teacher will team-teach the course, Principles of Technology, at a newly constructed $200,000 training lab at the giant waste disposal firm's research facility in Geneva, company and school district officials announced Wednesday.

Taking a step toward halting the decline of America's leadership in technology, IBM Corp. said Friday it will help veteran employees launch new careers teaching math and science. IBM will provide employees with salaries and benefits while they take necessary courses to become teachers. It will also pay tuition costs up to $15,000. The effort will begin in January with a pilot program in New York and North Carolina that will include up to 100 IBM employees. Plans are for the program to roll out nationwide in January 2007, said Stanley Litow, head of the IBM Foundation.

The Proviso Township High School District 209 board Monday night voted to dismiss nine probationary teachers and accept the resignations of 31 others in an annual ritual based on next fall's anticipated needs. Teachers must be notified of dismissal 45 or more days before the end of the school year under state law. The district's list was based on projected enrollment and the classes selected by the student body, officials said. Of the 31 who resigned, 11 were math and science teachers.

"The purpose of education," wrote Robert Maynard Hutchins, former chancellor of the University of Chicago, "is to unsettle the minds of young men." Yet, as reported in " 8), students are fed pap both by textbooks, which knuckle under to special interest groups, and teachers, who too often are inadequately prepared for the subjects they are required to teach, or are pressured by administrators and school boards to avoid controversial issues. Among science teachers, biology teachers have a special responsibility to maintain the integrity of their discipline.

An educational center focusing on Highland Park's lakeshore and ravine system may be established under a recommendation from the city's lakefront task force. Proposed as an interactive science museum targeted at school groups, the center would be established in a building owned by the Park District at Ravine Drive and the lakeshore, task force members said. The center would be part of the city's ongoing program to prevent the erosion of its Lake Michigan shoreline. Tests currently being carried out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may result in a long-term maintenance program for the shoreline and ravines that could cost the city about $250,000 per year, task force chairman David Hughes said.

There's nothing like the possibility that your teacher might literally blow up to make you pay attention in class. Thanks to four guys in Du Page County, high school students throughout the nation are wondering what strange thing their teachers will do next: Create loud explosions? Shoot a potato through the ceiling? Eat chalk? Burn down the school? "Gerald Walker, a well-known college physics teacher, says that your students` attention increases exponentially to the potential of your death," said Bob Lewis, a chemistry teacher at Downers Grove North High School.